The Eucharist: From Family Meal to Religious Ritual, Research Paper Example

Humans, as social and intelligent animals, have an innate need for order in their world.  When order is lacking, humans will impose an artificial order upon the world through ritualization of some element of culture.  Food, being one of humans most basic needs, often proves fertile ground for ritualization.  Food rituals exist in almost all cultures throughout the world.  Most cultures have distinct times of day or year in which the members of the culture eat certain foods, and these meals are often a ritual in some ways.  “Americans used only to eat turkey at Thanksgiving, and even now it is rare to cook the whole bird except at this family ceremonial; eggnog seems to be drunk only at Christmas in the States. Cooking the whole animal seems to be reserved for ceremonial and festive occasions. Suckling pig is only roasted whole in China for weddings and the like; whole oxen or pigs in Europe are only spit roasted at festivals” (Fox).  In many cultures, the food rituals become linked with the dominant religion.  In Japan, the consumption of green tea is a complex ritual associated with Buddhism.  “South American Indians grind up the ashes and bones of dead parents and mix them in a soup which all their relatives share” (Fox).  In Western tradition, the food ritual that has become most elaborate is connected to the dominant religion, Christianity.  The consumption of bread in the ritual known as the Eucharist is an elaborate ceremony with a highly prescribed order and symbolic function.  It is a meal that celebrates the sacrifice that Christians believe Jesus Christ made to save mankind.  How did this meal evolve from a simple family meal into a complex and varied ritual?

The origin of the Christian Eucharist ceremony lies in Judaism and Hellenistic society.  Christianity itself is an outgrowth of Judaism, as Jesus Christ was believed to be the Messiah predicted by the Jewish faith to arrive to save the Jews.  Judaism contains many ceremonial meals that appear to mirror the Christian celebration of the Eucharist.  Since most theologians believe that the Last Supper, when Jesus Christ and his followers dined together, was a Passover meal, the greatest influence on the development of the Eucharist is this meal.  Theologian Jonanda Groenewald states, “The ‘foundation’ of the Eucharist probably lies in the last meal of Jesus with his disciples, as well as in the other meals Jesus had” (3).  The Passover meal was a Jewish celebration of the escape from slavery in Egypt under the guidance of Moses.  According to Hebrew tradition, the Jewish people sacrificed a lamb and put its blood on the entryway to their homes to avoid destruction by their God.  In the story, God destroys the first-born sons of everyone in Egypt who does not sacrifice the lamb and paint their doorways with blood.  To remember this historical event, Judaism incorporates a Passover meal in the form of the Seder meal.  This meal involves the consumption of wine and bread in a prescribed order with blessings and recitations before each food.  While this practice was not ritualized until after Jesus’ death, the Seder was likely in existence and practiced by the Jews, the ethnicity of most of the early Christians.

The ritual of Seder closely mirrors the ceremony of the Eucharist.  According to Jewish website Chabad.org, the following constitute an observance of the Seder.  The diners are reclined and not sitting, the same position that Jesus practiced while performing the Last Supper.  The first of four glasses of wine is blessed and consumed.  Those participating in the Seder ritually purify themselves by washing their hands in a prescribed manner.  The next step involves blessing the food, onion or potato, and dipping it into saltwater, which represents the tears of the people in slavery.  Next, unleavened bread is broken and placed on a dish.  There is a short recitation of the Jewish struggle in Egypt followed by drinking of the second cup of wine and another washing of hands.  After this step, the diners consume the bread and at least one ounce of bitter herbs before beginning the main feast.  In the main feast, participants consume a boiled egg dipped into saltwater and other foods.  At the end of the meal, the diners consume the leftover bread, which symbolizes the sacrificial lamb.  The third and fourth cups of wine are taken along with appropriate blessings, and the ritual ends with a song of praise.

The Seder ritual mirrors the contemporary Eucharist ceremony in Christianity.  In the Christian Eucharist, the priest begins the ceremony with blessings and prayers.  A wafer of unleavened bread, the same type used in the Seder, is prayed over as the priest tells the participants that the bread is the body of Jesus Christ.  The priest breaks the bread to symbolize the broken body of Christ, crucified by the Romans.  The priest will also parallel the lamb, which saved the Jews from the Egyptians, with Jesus Christ, who died to save men and women from damnation.  Next, the priest will bless a cup of wine, telling participants that it is the blood of Jesus Christ.  This step is followed by prayers by all assembled.  Then, the diners receive the bread and wine to consume.  Following the meal, the leftover food is put into a sacred tabernacle, and the people sing a song of praise.  As one can see, the basic structure of the two meals is roughly symmetrical.  Both involve consumption of ritual bread and wine preceded by prayers and blessings.

The Christian Eucharist did not just originate in the Jewish Seder but also in various Hellenistic ritual meals.  Since Christianity arose in the Roman Empire at its height, the influence of the dominant religion, the pagan Roman religion, is easily visible.  In Roman society, there were many mystery cults that were dedicated to different gods.  The greatest of these in terms of Christianity was the cult of Mithras.   “ The early Christian church regarded the cult of Mithras as its mortal enemy. The mythology and liturgy of Mithraism were held up as deliberate mockeries of Christian doctrine and sacraments. The youthful hero-god Mithras was believed to be a caricature of Jesus Christ, while Mithraic initiatory rites were considered counterfeit baptisms” (Scaliger 39).  The general structure of mystery cults was that the followers met in individual homes or other secretive areas and participated in rites that provided worship of the god.  The cult of Mithras also used a meal that involved consumption of blood that mimicked the Christian Eucharist.  Very little is known about the mystery cults, but they likely influenced the ritualization of the Eucharist meal.  Additionally, Roman society had other gatherings that were organized around meals that likely influenced the development of the Eucharist.  “[The Eucharist] might have appeared to the outsider – and outsiders there were (1 Cor 14:23) – like an ordinary group of members of an organisation coming together for a common meal, like any such social and religious thiasos or collegium in which membership consisted of a monthly dinner together with the usual camaraderie and a contribution into a common fund for charitable purposes, including burial of members” (Osiek 3).  So, the Seder meal and the mystery cults and collegium of ancient Rome likely led to the development of the Eucharist ceremony.

After it’s origination, the ceremony of the Eucharist developed rapidly.  At its institution by Jesus Christ and his apostles, the Christian faith was small and largely centered around the home of individuals who were initiated into the religion.  The early Christian church practiced baptism as an initiation and gathered members together in each other’s homes for prayers, a meal, and discussion.  In the sacred text of Christianity, The Bible, “Some well-known New Testament figures hosted such gatherings in their houses. Amongst the disciples of Jesus,

Mary the mother of John Mark, cousin of Barnabas and sometime travelling companion of Barnabas and Paul, hosted the group of believers in her house” (Osiek 2).  Thus, the first celebrations of the Eucharist were not a prescribed ritual at all.  There was no set order or prescribed blessings.  In fact, the meal likely resembled an informal Seder.  According to Osiek, “[Early Christians] gathered for the common meal and ate and drank. It would be expected that the person or persons in whose house they were would lead any prayer, conversation, or toasting that took place and therefore also this ritual commemoration.  Toward the end, the host or hostess of the household in which they met took bread and a cup of wine, recalled the last supper of Jesus with his disciples and repeated words passed down by tradition as those of Jesus” (4).  It seems that the early Eucharist was a family meal that had gathered some symbolic meaning but had not been fully conceived as a ritual.

Using a text written in the fourth century, Thomas O’Loughlin describes the development of the common Christian family meal into the more ordered ritual of the Eucharist.  O’Loughlin argues that the story of James contained within the text illustrates a ritualization of the Eucharist.  He points to the development of the Eucharist within texts of The Bible as becoming increasingly ceremonial.  That is, the description of Jesus Christ’s last supper with his followers becomes symbolic in the latter writings collected in The Bible.  O’Loughlin believes that all the meals consumed after the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ became a ritual meal.  As he states, “ The various traditions about post-resurrection meals of Jesus with his followers, such as those found in Luke, John and our passage provided a narrative framework within which their audience could understand what needed doing when they met and ate, and which could ‘explain’ the significance they were attaching to their practices” (10).  The codification of the elements of the meal and the blessings of the meal continued during the fourth century.

By the fourth century, the leaders of the Christian Church found the need to codify and further ritualize the Eucharist so that the meaning of the ceremony was apparent to new converts.  By this time, Christianity was a legal religion in the Roman Empire and the political and organizational structure of the Church had grown complex.  A system of bishops that collaborated on doctrine and Christian practice gained power and emerged.  These bishops gathered the rituals of baptism and the common meal and elevated them to the role of ceremony.  Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, began a push to elevate the rites of baptism and communion (the Eucharist) by expounding upon the rituals used in the preparation of Communion.  By this time, the Church was baptizing members at Easter and engaging in a more ritualized Eucharist.  However, Ambrose began to feel that those being initiated into the church, the catechumens, might perceive the rituals of the Church to be lacking in presentation and elevation.  In his writings, he indicated that “If baptism had been an underwhelming experience for some, [he] shuddered to think of first impressions at first Communion” (Frank 619).  Largely, this issue was a result of the catechumens removal from the Church before the Eucharist.  So, catechumens did not witness the order of the ceremony nor hear the words explaining the ritual.  Various bishops in the Church began establishing and promoting practices that would later help universalize the order of the Eucharist.  John Chrystotum’s , Bishop of Antioch, catechetical instructions reveal his ongoing concern for the communicant’s gestures and posture. To him, “the show of bare feet and the outstretched hands presented a vivid reminder of captivity of the body under Satan” (632).  Obviously, there were now rituals that the participants evolved regarding positioning of the body during the Eucharist.  Additionally, other bishops, Cyril of Jerusalem and Theodore of Mopsuestia, “commented on the bread, the wine, or the communicant’s own hands extended, Theodore offered a more telescopic view, paying closer attention to the celebrants and the visual impressions they created throughout the liturgy. At the outset he called attention to the deacons and especially their garments, “taller than they are,” with a stole on the left shoulder floating backward and forward, symbolizing their freedom” (638).  Now, the Eucharist involved certain prescriptions for the dress of the priests leading the ceremony.  By the influence of Cyril, Theodore, and Chrysostom, the rituals “accompanied by prescribed postures and gestures, such as looking up, looking down, or nesting hands, the mental images invoked by preachers constructed and thereby situated divine presence in eucharistic space: on tables, in thrones, even in the cup of one’s hand” built the Eucharist ceremony (642).  Now, the ritualization of the Eucharist was largely complete.  The formula for its observance would change little for hundreds of years.

Now that the formula was complete, the further development of the Eucharist focused on understanding its symbolic and physical nature.  In the theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas, the “sacrament conjures up the passion of Christ and the paschal mystery as a whole for it is the cause at work in the holiness of a Christian, for ‘by his death he gave life to the world’; it also makes us aware of the ‘form’, the identity of Christian holiness, which is not merely a set of virtues or achievements, it is Christ in person” (Gorevan 663).  This change is important because it leads to the idea of transubstantiation, i.e. the bread and wine of the Eucharist becomes the actual body and blood of Jesus Christ during the ceremony.  Also, the change led to the development of more complex rituals related to the Eucharist, including devotion to and reverence of the bread and wine after the ritual meal.  “The original and primary purpose of the reservation of the sacrament was for the administration of viaticum, and the more general giving of communion outside Mass, and these purposes were adhered to in both East and West. It was in the eleventh century, in the West, that the concentration on eucharistic realism and the problem of the real presence brought about a change in popular devotion” (McGuckian 143).  The change in devotion was a reservation of the bread from the Mass that would be presented to the people for prayer and contemplation.  This practice also developed into an elaborate ritual in its own right.  A special holder, monstrance, was created to hold the wafer of bread.  Additionally, the priest was not allowed to touch the monstrance after the wafer was placed within it.  The practice of this devotion continues to this day, with many churches allowing adoration of the Sacrament 24 hours a day.

This final development of devotion to the bread is the last major change in the Eucharist.  While the Protestant Reformation changed the practice of the Church, this change was often the denial of the Eucharist as a ritual or a denial of ritualistic elements of the ceremony.  In an overview of modern perspectives on the Eucharist, Geoffrey Turner highlights some of the different views on the symbolism of the ritual.  After the fracture of the Church, Lutheran denominations viewed the bread and wine as consubstantiation.  Churches influenced by Zwingli and other Swedish reformers placed the Eucharist in the role of being an entirely symbolic ceremony lacking any real religious worth or devotion.  Other denominations, such as the Anglican Church and the Presbyterian Church, occupied some middle ground, viewing the bread and wine as sacred but not the body and blood of Jesus Christ.  Most of these changes to the Eucharist were the result of cultural changes, for instance the rise of Rationalism and the rise of Postmodernism.  Regardless, the Eucharist as practiced in traditional Christianity, is the result of a development from Jewish tradition, through Hellenistic custom, into codification and ritualization in the Christian community.  The meal was originally a family meal organized around a religious gathering in congregants’ homes.  It was open to the public and, though illegal by Roman law, was never a hidden meal.  As the Christian religion spread and Christians became persecuted, the practice moved underground and barriers to engaging in communion developed.  These barriers were necessary for the protection of the new religion, but they also provided a base on which to further ritualize the Eucharist.  Thus, the exclusion of non-Christians from the meal and the codification of the items and behaviors used in the ceremony became a way to hide the practice from outsiders.  Eventually, these practices accreted into the Eucharist that is present in the Church today.

Works Cited

Fox, Robin. “Food and Eating: An Anthropological Perspective?.”Food and Eating: An Anthropological Perspective. Social Issues Research Centre, n.d. Web. 12 Nov. 2012. <http://www.sirc.org/publik/food_and_eating_11.html>.

Frank, Georgia. “‘Taste And See’: The Eucharist And The Eyes Of Faith In The Fourth Century.” Church History 70.4 (2001): 619. Academic Search Complete. Web. 12 Nov. 2012.

Gorevan, Patrick. “O Sacrum Convivium – St Thomas on The Eucharist.” New Blackfriars 90.1030 (2009): 659-664. Academic Search Complete. Web. 12 Nov. 2012.

Groenewald, Jonanda. “Show, Tell And Re-Enact: The Reason Why the Earliest Followers of Jesus Found the Eucharist Meaningful.” Hervormde Teologiese Studies 67.1 (2011): 1-10. Academic Search Complete. Web. 12 Nov. 2012.

McGuckian, Michael C. “The Eucharist in The West.” New Blackfriars 88.1014 (2007): 142-149. Academic Search Complete. Web. 12 Nov. 2012.

O’Loughlin, Thomas. “Post-Resurrection Meal and Its Implications for the Early Understanding Of The Eucharist.” Transformation (02653788) 25.1 (2008): 1-14. Academic Search Complete. Web. 12 Nov. 2012.

Osiek, Carolyn. “How Much Do We Really Know about the Lives Of Early Christ Followers?.” Hervormde Teologiese Studies 67.1 (2011): 1-5. Academic Search Complete. Web. 12 Nov. 2012.

Scaliger, Charles. “Mithraic Mysteries and the Cult Of Empire.” New American (08856540) 26.13 (2010): 35-39. Academic Search Complete. Web. 12 Nov. 2012.

“The Seder Service in a Nutshell.” Chabad.org. Chapad.org, n.d. Web. 12 Nov. 2012. <http://www.chabad.org/holidays/passover/pesach_cdo/aid/1751/jewish/The-Seder-in-a-Nutshell.htm>.

Turner, Geoffrey. “The Eucharist: Some Contemporary Perspectives.” New Blackfriars 88.1014 (2007): 125-127. Academic Search Complete. Web. 12 Nov. 2012.